Earlier this week, a story came out saying that, once upon a time, Gabe Newell picked up the hobby of Mongolian throat singing and got so invested in it that, for literal months, the Valve chief would stroll the company’s hallways practicing his craft. It got to the point where some staff were closing doors because it annoyed them, and Newell eventually dropped it in favor of his newly found sword-collecting hobby.
Now, though, Gaben himself confirmed the story in an email response to X user @tbaszt. The user sent Gaben an email to which he tends to respond quite often, that being [email protected]. In it, the user asked whether the stories were true, and Newell actually confirmed it all.
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“Yeah, I had tried chatting with Paul Pena (the late American blues musician) about it after I tried learning on my own. I am entirely self-taught, and it shows,” Newell said. He even goes into deeper, very precise details on which types of throat singing he tried to master. “I worked on sygyt, kargyraa, and other styles,” Newell said, “and got to the point where I was really… annoying.”
Pena passed away in 2005, and this hobby of Gaben’s was supposedly emerging during the development of Half-Life 2, among other games Valve worked on at the time. In these last 20 years, the chief executive did not forego his love for Mongolian throat singing and actually still does it from time to time. “Every once in a while, I’ll pick it back up,” he wrote in the email. “It takes a couple of weeks to condition my throat (kargyraa is easy, but to get a clear sygyt takes more time).”
It seems once a person really gets into the craft of Mongolian throat singing, it’s quite hard to let go. The memes that have spawned since this passion of Newell’s was revealed are nothing short of legendary, and long may they last.
